Ballet

This year is the second in a row I’ve gotten to go to a Kennedy Center performance.  Last year, my girlfriend (now fiancée) and I went with another couple to see Porgy & Bess.  This past Thursday, it was the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.  Having never seen a ballet before (or anything called modern dance for that matter), I had no idea what to really expect.  It turned out to be quite a fun time.

Of the four works they performed (all of which were impressive), my favorite parts were the solo “The Evolution of a Secured Feminine”, and other dances within “Revelations” (the company’s signature work) that had no more than a handful of dancers.  I suppose that no one goes to the ballet for the music, but with Duke Ellington music as the backdrop for one of the pieces and gospel for some of the others, I certainly enjoyed that as much as the dancing.

.NET Reflector–No Longer Free, But Still Worth It

Those of us who registered with red-gate.com after they bought Reflector from its creator, Lutz Roeder, got an e-mail on February 2 saying the next version of Reflector would no longer be free.  It’s the second time in my recent memory that a free and/or open source package for .NET became closed.  The first one was NCover, which was probably the best option out there for determining how much of your codebase was covered by unit tests.  Even at a price with subscription of $658, it may be a more cost-effective option than paying for the Visual Studio sku that includes team testing tools.

By contrast, the entry-level price for .NET Reflector is relatively low ($35).  As a tool, I think it’s valuable enough to the every-day .NET developer to spend their own money for.

(Finally) Engaged

Back on January 14, I turned my girlfriend Ebony into my fiancée 🙂  The next day, we went cruising for a week in the eastern Caribbean with some friends (more on that in another post).

My buddy Sandro is setting up another website that will have all the particulars about the wedding.